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Tip: Accessing and Using the ChromeOS Developer Shell

If you’ve ever used a Windows PC, you’re probably familiar with the MS-DOS CMD window where you can manipulate files, traverse directories, and run special commands. Or, you might also be familiar with the PowerShell CMD window, where even more powerful Windows command-line wealth is available. Did you know that ChromeOS offers something similar?

ChromeOS has the Chrome OS Developer Shell or CROSH. To access it, use the following key sequence on the Chromebook keyboard:

Ctrl-Alt-T

CROSH opens and runs in a Chrome web browser tab.

There’s a stack of ready-made commands you can access in CROSH, containing things like battery status, free memory information, peer-to-peer update sharing, Wake-on-Lan configuration, etc. To find all the commands available to you and how to use them, type Help_Advanced at the <crosh> prompt and hit enter.

To exit CROSH, just close the tab or type Exit at the <crosh> prompt.

Don’t like the white text on a black background or just want to customize the CROSH environment? Open the Terminal Profile Settings page: